


Rhythm

by the_blue_fairie



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29752392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_blue_fairie/pseuds/the_blue_fairie
Summary: A mother tells her daughter the story of Elsa.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Rhythm

When she reached the mountaintop, she had no Voice to guide her.

She’d had enough of voices then.

_Don't let them in, don't let them see_ _  
Be the good girl you always have to be  
Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know  
Well, now they know!_

The queen was out of step.

The queen was finding her own rhythm.

Her own.

The music in her heart was her own.

The music was of her laughter, of Anna’s laughter, mingling among the music of the coronation ball.

That entwining laughter, long unknown in the castle halls – confined.

_Of her_ – composed from the lightness that escaped her lips, the lightness that was always in her heart, composed from her own repudiation of the strictures placed upon her, from her _feeling_ , within herself and for herself.

How she then began to dance!

Each step was of her spirit, of no other’s heart but hers, yet woven with another’s heart, threaded with her love for another’s soul, sister to herself.

The dance was improvisational – one moment gliding under the stars with star-silver reflected underfoot, reflected anew with each new movement as she raced along the bridge she shaped in the moment and the moment after that; one moment stamping the earth with a thunder like her own heartbeat, revitalized, raising her arms, reaching up to heaven not for heaven’s sake but for her own, and bringing elements of this world with her, bringing elements of herself with her; sparkling stars from heaven not heaven’s stars but hers, ice-wonder not earth’s but hers; her own motions, her own ease; her body her own, her smooth leg striding forward bare, her hips swaying not in sin, not for any’s eyes, but because it made her feel good…

Her heart, soul, body were her own – and the rhythm of her dance was of her own making.

The queen was out of step – and brought back in step – but all is well, mothers tell their children, for the fifth spirit fell out of step again – and out of step is good this time, is it not? It is an extension of her out-of-step-ness on the mountaintop, a fulfilment of that, is it not?

Of course, of course – and that is why she cringes.

Because extensions of things should always lead to their undermining.

Because the natural growth from shamelessness is shame.

Of course, of course – how could anyone be so foolish, any starry-eyed child at her mother’s hearth?

The stars that child catches in her eyes are not her own, just as the stars the queen-that-was caught in her hands were not hers to clasp but vanity. Such is the impulsiveness of youth. You grow reckless, right? You go too far. You have to check yourself.

The queen-that-was was always checking herself – checking her poise, checking her garments, checking the modulation of her speech.

Regression is a natural, natural growth.

It’s not regression, don’t you see? the mother tells her little girl at the hearth. Perhaps it is the vestiges of shame still clinging to her. It doesn’t matter that in growing yourself into something new, you carry those vestiges of shame, we don’t need to talk about that – _then why is it in the story?_ the little girl interjects, _why does it need to be there, if its purpose is not to touch on that shame with empathy but to shame itself?_ – perhaps the purpose _is_ to touch on that shame with empathy, the mother offers feebly, but does not believe it herself, for she has heard the laughter resounding around her, the bemused and sometimes contemptuous laughter, but she does not have to take this from her daughter, her little out-of-step daughter, we don’t need to talk about that, we don’t need to talk about that, stop talking about it, get to bed.

If the little girl, swathed in a meager blanket, chooses to interpret the moment in the story as the vestiges of shame still clinging to the queen-that-was, a tragic moment that touches the soul – that interpretation is _of her_ and not the story, for the story’s phrasing is clear, clear enough to give her mother pause.

Wincing at youth is not rejection, right? There is that excuse – for these are excuses, for even if wincing is not rejection, it is still a specific framing – a framing that frames the exuberance of the past as something to outgrow, something formative, yes, we’d never say otherwise, but _shameful_ still…

_She’ll never live it down._

Why does she have to live it down? the child whispers – not to her mother, her mother has long since told her to be silent, sent her to bed, but to herself, shivering in her blanket not from cold but from fear, for shame seeps in, under the stars – those stars outside her window the little girl is too afraid to grasp because what if the years that are to come call her reckless in the attempt? what if she calls herself reckless, cringes at the thought?

_Aha_ , says a smug voice, _but there is grace in the attempt, however reckless it may be_ – a smug and self-satisfied voice, for it’s got the girl now – _we know that there is grace in it, we merely wish to temper that grace with reality, you don’t lose the grace with another perspective_ , and the smug voice sniggers like the self-satisfied imp, chief pupil of the school of the devil, mirror-maker, who is so adept at perspective parlor tricks…

For the chief pupil among the imps knows why the mirror was made, was there at its making, knows the reflection in the ice _does_ distort…

( _All those who went to the hobgoblin's school – for he had a school of his own – told everyone that a miracle had come to pass. Now, they asserted, for the very first time you could see how the world and its people really looked._ )

( _All who went to the demon’s school – for he kept a school – talked everywhere of the wonders they had seen, and declared that people could now, for the first time, see what the world and mankind were really like._ )

The imps all reached to heaven to mock at the angels but they mock the queen-that-was for doing just the same, for reaching up to heaven not for heaven’s sake but for her own, for scattering the stars with her own brighter brilliance in defiance.

They all fell to hell, but _she_ – she – clawed her way up from hell, from furnace-red enclosing her, aurora-red glaring down, painted over the stars with troll fingers… _There is beauty in it, but also great danger, don’t you see? We told you there was beauty in it, we told you so, you cannot say that we did not – here, we told you so…_ words of equivocation… Such had been _her_ school. Such had been her tutelage. The hell-school of the imps had been a school of raucousness, of camaraderie, of joy – of harmony – all in rhythm – _About, about, in ghostly rout / They trod a saraband –_ Elsa’s hell-school was unlike theirs, and so her defiance was unlike theirs, was more than a sniggering joke to her – hurling gloves to heaven, offering a rebuke to heaven’s eyes –

She was angry – and for once, not angry at herself – angry at those that hurt her –

More than a sniggering joke to her? Oh, but it was a sniggering joke, don’t you see? Didn’t you see her cringe? Cringe so the chorus of imps could have their laughter?

( _"No, this wasn’t important to her. No, this didn’t count. No, you didn’t see what you thought you saw."_ )

_She can’t have this._

_This was hers, but she can’t have it._

She found her rhythm, found it for herself, with no Voice to guide her – _and there is beauty in it, but of course there is_ , the equivocating Voices murmur, _but danger too, something scary in her step, something threatening – too defiant, too angry –_

She can have Something Else, Something New – we’ll allow that – Something Safer.

An Evolution, we’ll call it, that conveniently shaves off those uncomfortable edges.

An Explanation – of what she is, why she is – Authority’s Affirmation.

Authority.

She must show Deference to Authority, Accept Authority.

(Had she not shown deference to authority for years, the authority of her parents, of the trolls? and look where that had gotten her…)

_But even one spirit out of sync can cause chaos._

That is how they frame it, then, as a matter of _harmony_ or _chaos_. And, of course, harmony is synonymous with Good in such framing.

As before, it is Wrong to be out of step.

The queen-that-was always was in step, bound upon the firstborn’s path, bloodline a line up the chapel steps to take the orb and scepter…

Blood-path…

( _…lie the answers and the path for you…_ )

Even with Change, she has a Path to follow, blood-fixed, rooted in _what you are_ –

Even with Change, you cannot escape _what you were born_ –

_What you were born is paramount, what you were born quantifies you, makes you understandable, decipherable –_

_A Reason for what you are and all the normal folk can breathe –_

_You are a riddle and riddles are nagging things, you must be solved, solved, solved, solved…_

Change is so familiar, isn’t it?

The feeling of being defined, defined before birth, the one indefinable thing in you _finally reined in, kept in check_ –

The one time you etched your own Path up the North Mountain, scattered all paths made for you to the wind, you found a rhythm –

But if you scatter all paths, that’s chaos.

And we can’t have that, can we?

We have to rein you in.

Parallelism pageantry, pearl-glow splendor – Ahtohallan seems so like the North Mountain on the surface…

Except you are stepping into a pattern already woven in Ahtohallan, where on the North Mountain, you wove your own, you conceived the patterns and constructed them, _you defined yourself…_

And we can’t have that.

All we want is harmony.

All we want is for you to find a rhythm.

Just… not the rhythm that you found.

Another rhythm.

On our terms.

A Safer one.

Safer on all counts – especially financially.

(Not to be meta.)

One that solves the Riddle of You, puts you in your Proper Place.

That is harmony.

Harmony is such a sonorous word, so sonorous, you might mistake it for liberty – but –

The little girl stays awake in the night, long after her mother has told her to be silent and get to bed…


End file.
